What Israel is doing is monstrous and evil. A premeditated murder plot disguised as defense. To be clear, I am not saying Israel cannot defend itself, I am suggesting they are not defending themselves and that they are in fact terrorizing the Gazan population. Americans have a special duty in denouncing this because it is American money and weapons that have helped create this situation and deal death to Palestinians. This is not defense – this is murder.

Minister of Home Front Defense Avi Dichter has stated, “there is no other choice, Israel must carry out a formatting action in Gaza, actually format the system and clean it out.” Like 1’s and 0’s on a hard drive, Palestinians are something to be erased, eradicated, and arranged in patterns pleasing to Israel. They are not humans, but corrupt data in the eyes of Israeli leaders.

There is a bias within the church for Israel, a deep bias. Judging from our history as a nation, the USA favors Israel. Israel is somehow always justified. Why is it that the Palestinians are the villians? That’s what we’ve been taught to believe since Abraham’s story was told in the Bible. Time to shed those misconceptions and not allow ourselves to be used. Chose the right.

this is true, and it’s very disturbing–that bias towards Israel–
I think that the mistranslations in the Old Testament are very real. An Irish Catholic priest who went to “Israel” years ago (perhaps in the 60s or 70s; I lost the book) on a pilgrammage and ended up helping wounded Palestinian children came to the conclusion that the stories of military valor in the Old Testament were not inspired of God. He began to try to wake people up, ended up in Israeli prisons and went back to Ireland to wake up his fellow priests–
I had a powerful ‘ah, ha!’ moment when I read his story.
More LDS need to hear such things–

This is certainly murder. Defense as a motive!?…they might have more legitimacy if they called it mercy killings, after having institutionalized apartheid and institutionalized racism. Let’s pray it doesn’t progress to the “white flag” deaths of 2009, when over 1,000 civilians were murdered.

These are the same people who not three years ago bombed a united nations school full of women, children seeking refuge.

From 2009: One couple recounted the horrific experience of watching their children die. The father, Khalid Abed Rabbo, recounts,
“When the soldiers arrived outside our house, they yelled for us to come outside. My wife, mother, three daughters and I went outside. We were holding cloths, because we are a peaceful family. I thought that the soldiers would realize that they were looking at women and children.”
His wife, Umm Soad Abed Rabbo, says,
“Right in front of me, they shot my eldest daughter. Then they shot the little one, Amal, and then Samar, who was in front of her. When we ran inside, they shot their elderly grandmother who can hardly walk.”

In our mainstream media, Palestinian violence against Israelis is amplified while Israeli violence and injustice against Palestinians, which far outnumbers instances of Palestinian violence, is usually ignored, minimized, or rationalized. I don’t know why the U.S. corporate media is so biased against Palestinians, but it is.

Without the support of the U.S. government, Israel would not be able to stomp all over Palestinian human rights the way it has been doing for decades.

I applaud the bravery of Cynthia McKinney and others, including European Jews, who tried to get medical supplies to Gaza several years ago–
and ended up in Israeli jails, along with Israel’s own young conscientious objectors, bright young things who don’t want to perpetuate the violence anymore–

bro madson, i enjoyed your chapter in war and peace in our time. excellent perspective. i like your call for literarily reading rather than literally. perhaps i misinterpreted, but i felt a large part of your argument is founded on the idea that nephi acted incorrectly in slaying laban. can you expound on this? i’ve had conflict with this act, but nephi confirmed it several times with the spirit, no?

thanks for the compliment. My argument doesn’t hinge on whether Nephi was correct or incorrect. It hinges more on making an example of his act and using his act as a foundational story that gets mimicked and replayed by future Nephites. The important point is that whatever Nephi did it should not have become a model for future behavior and idealized as a good thing even if you believe God commanded it, of which I am very skeptical for a number of reasons.

What I am trying to show is how certain stories trap us into patterns of behavior and that both Nephites and Lamanites had to give up their false stories and in their place accept a story rooted in Jesus.